Chateau d'Or, Norah, and Kitty Craig

by Mary Jane Holmes

Kitty Craig was just married; and the white satin and fleecy lace, in which she had looked so much like an angel that her great, handsome giant of a husband hardly dared to touch her, was folded and packed away in one of the trunks which stood in the hall waiting the arrival of the express wagon which was to take them to the train. And Kitty in her traveling-dress looked infinitely prettier and more approachable than she had in all that sheen of lace, and satin and flowers, which had cost so much money and discussion, the mother and aunties saying that it was a useless expense, as were nearly all such bridal dresses, when the bride was neither wife nor daughter of a millionaire—that in nine cases out of ten the costly fabric was worn only at the altar and then laid aside to fade and grow yellow with time, or at best to be made over after a lapse of years, when there arose some occasion which demanded it. Kitty, on the contrary, knew she should need it, for was she not going to New York, the very “hub” of parties, and receptions and society, and though she did not know an individual there, and might, as her quaint old aunt expressed it, be at first “a rat among cats,” instead of “a cat among rats,” as she had hitherto been, she should soon have troops of friends, for was not John the confidential clerk in a first-class wholesale house on Broadway, and already acquainted with the wives of his employers, Messrs. Orr, Guile and Steele, and as each of these ladies was in her way a star, would they not be the sesame through which Kitty would enter society, and eventually become a cat. There was Mrs. Orr, the wife of the senior partner, a handsome matron, who rolled in gold—name, house and person, all golden—and telling of the dollars her husband counted by the millions. John knew her, and had once been invited to dine with her on Sunday, and in his next letter to Kitty had delighted her with a description of the dinner, at which Mrs. Orr presided in satin dress of golden-brown, with diamonds in her ears, and where her daughter, Miss Elinor Orr, wore natural camellias in her hair and talked French to her mother all the time. Then there was Mrs. Guile, a second wife, and a dashing brunette, whose servants did not speak a word of English, and at whose house John had once taken tea on a Sunday night, when his fine baritone voice was wanted in a quartette of music which followed in the evening.

Kitty’s fancy was caught with the French servants, the camellias, and the silver service and satin of golden-brown, but the Sunday dining, and tea-drinking, and practicing of music shocked her keen sense of right and wrong, and lowered the Orrs and Guiles a little in her estimation. To her the words, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” meant just that, and nothing less; and not all John’s assurances that many good, pious people in New York visited on Sunday, especially in the evening, availed to convince her. Brought up in a New England town, she had imbibed some of the puritanical notions of right and wrong, which, sneer at them as we may, are the bone and sinew of that honesty of purpose and integrity of soul which characterize so many of the New Englanders and stamp them as different from their Western brothers. Kitty could not fellowship Sabbath-breaking, and Madames Orr and Guile were looked upon with a shadow of distrust. But she was sure to like the young and beautiful Lottie, the only daughter of Mr. Guile, whose second marriage had been distasteful to the young girl, and hurried her into matrimony with the quiet, staid Amasa Steele, the junior partner of the firm, who was several years her senior. John knew her well, for she often drove to the store for her husband, and while waiting for him amused herself with the confidential clerk, whose young face and fresh ideas were more to her taste than the sober manners and gray hair of her spouse. Kitty had once seen a note from Lottie to John, a delicate, perfumed thing, inviting him to take part in a little musicale she was getting up, and saying so much about his splendid baritone, which she must have, that Kitty had felt a twinge of something like jealousy of the city girl, and was glad when John wrote to her that Lottie Guile was married that morning and gone on her bridal tour.

That was two years ago, and before John was as able to take a wife as he was now. An increase of salary and a few thousand dollars left him by a considerate old uncle, whose name he bore, made marriage possible, and he and Kitty were married on a lovely June morning, when the air was full of sunshine and sweet odors from the roses and the heliotropes blossoming in the garden beds. And Kitty was very happy, and her heart beat high with joyful anticipations of the future and her life in New York, where she was sure to know people through the Orrs, and Guiles, and Steeles. The firm had sent her a bridal present of a beautiful silver tea-set, and wholly ignorant of the fact that neither of the three ladies representing the firm knew anything of the gift, Kitty felt as if acquainted with them already, and had insisted upon the white satin and scores of things which her mother predicted she would never need. But Kitty knew she should. The white satin was for the possible party which might be given for her by some one of “the firm,” and the pretty light silk for calls at home and abroad; and Kitty had it all marked out in her mind just what she should wear on different occasions, and knowing but little of the paraphernalia of a city woman’s toilet, was happy accordingly.

They were not to board; John had had enough of that, and felt sick every time he remembered the boarding-house dinners, now done with forever. A pretty little cozy house far up town, in the vicinity of the park, was to be their home, and John had furnished it with the money left him by his uncle, and in the absence of other feminine advice had ventured to ask Mrs. Lottie to “drive round some day and see if it would do.”

There was a slight elevating of Lottie’s eyebrows and a look of surprise at the boldness of the young man, and then, thinking within herself, “I have talked with him so much about music that I daresay he thinks he can take liberties,” the lady graciously signified her readiness to oblige. But she found it very inconvenient to go the day John fixed upon, very inconvenient, in fact, to go any day, and at last sent her maid, who had “exquisite taste,” and who reported “everything perfectly lovely,” to John, and “rather plain, but quite good enough” to her mistress.

There was a trip to Niagara Falls, a sail down the St. Lawrence, a rambling about in Montreal and Quebec, a few days at the White Mountains, a week of rest in the dear old home among the Berkshire hills, and then, right in the heat of summer, when everybody was out of town, they came one night to the cozy home in Fifty-seventh street, where Susan, the maid of all work, hired in Chicopee, met them with her kindly smile, and the tea-table nicely spread stood waiting to greet them. John’s holiday was over, and he went back to his business the next morning the happiest man who rode down town either in stage, or car, or private carriage. He was married and Kitty was his wife, and he felt her kiss upon his lips and saw her as she stood looking after him with those great, sunny, blue eyes of hers, and there was a song of joy in his heart which showed itself upon his face as he entered the counting-room and took his accustomed seat at the desk.

Messrs. Orr and Guile were away doing duty at Saratoga, but Mr. Steele was at home and welcomed the young man warmly, and tried to say some smart thing with regard to the business which had kept him away so long. Then John asked for Lottie, and was told that she was at Newport with a party of friends.

“Confounded bores those watering-places. I can’t endure them; and Lottie told me I’d better come home, she could do very well without me,” Mr. Steele said, in a weary kind of way; and John thought of Kitty and how unwilling he should be to be separated from her now she was all his own.

In the exuberance of his new happiness and because he pitied the junior partner, who must be so lonely without his wife, he invited him to dine with himself and Kitty, and Mr. Steele accepted the invitation, and was made so welcome by the pretty bride that he went again and again, and by the time autumn hung out her gay attire and Lottie came back to her home it had become a matter of course for him to dine with the Craigs as often as twice a week; and those visits, where he saw for the first time in his life, perhaps, how pleasant a home could be with love upon the hearthstone and in the atmosphere of every room, were influencing him for good and making him a softer, more demonstrative man than he had been hitherto. And when at last Lottie came early in October, he met her at the train; a very unusual thing for him to do, and kissed her so warmly that she looked at him with surprise, wondering if he had “failed” and was trying to smooth it over to her.

“What is it? Has anything happened?” she asked.